Ruth A. Johnston

Undergraduate student

Matriculated in 1981 (class of 85) in Annapolis.

Ruth Johnston 2019

Author Profile

I attended St. John's for two years and completed my degree at Penn State by studying languages and linguistics. I raised three kids and, between 1996 and 2003, taught AP English Lit via early internet. Then I started writing books.

I have published five non-fiction books, two for Greenwood Press, three self-published. A few poems have been published, though only one has a digital link. On Medium, I've also written some essays advocating legislative reform for treating severe mental illness, and using Facebook and a Wordpress blog, I write about medieval history.

Links

My Wordpress history blog
My very primitive website

List of Publications

  1. A Companion to Beowulf (2010)
  2. Re-Modeling the MInd: Personality in Balance (2015)
  3. All Things Medieval (2011)
  4. Excavating English (2013)
  5. Speak Like Rain (2018)
  6. The Love of God (2018)
  7. Rain in Season (2018)

A Companion to Beowulf (Book)

Year of publication: 2010

Publisher: Pannebaker Press

Genre: literary analysis

Description: This is the only book-length student guide to Beowulf. It covers the historical setting, the events in the poem itself, literary elements that students might need to cite in a paper, the Anglo-Saxon language, religion, and many other things. The last chapter talks about Tolkien's ties to Beowulf. There is also a library-bound edition, published in 2005 by Greenwood Press, under my former name Ruth Johnston Staver. I bought the paperback rights and set up Pannebaker Press first to issue an affordable paperback.

Publication Links

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Re-Modeling the MInd: Personality in Balance (Book)

Year of publication: 2015

Publisher: Pannebaker Press (self-published)

Genre: personality psychology

Description: Re-Modeling the Mind: Personality in Balance starts with a challenging proposition: what if human personality is best understood by looking first at nature and animals? We know that nature's systems are self-balancing, and we know that insects, animals, birds, and insects are born knowing things. Like animals, we carry templates of safety and danger that are inborn---hard-wired---in a very rough outline. Unlike animals, our templates of safety and danger are primarily about how to stay safe from each other, since we are our own greatest predators. Our brains are also part of the natural world and some of its physical laws apply. Like a natural system, the brain seeks efficiency, which means the right balance between habit and chaos. From all this emerges the predictable patterns we call personality. "Re-Modeling" means both creating a new model for how we think about personality, and using it to improve the way we manage our own personalities.. The book uses Carl Jung's framework for outlining how the mind takes in and organizes information, and it also uses the Myers-Briggs personality types that many readers are familiar with. However, while the types are recognizably the same, the new model presents different reasons for why they exist, what they mean, and how they work....

Publication Links

Buy on Amazon, paperback or Kindle
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All Things Medieval (Book)

Year of publication: 2011

Publisher: Greenwood Press

Genre: encyclopedia of material culture

Description: Two volumes, all about the material culture of medieval Europe. It's an ideal resource for people who are trying to imagine the Middle Ages for fiction or role-playing games. List of Entries Agriculture Alphabet Animals Armor Arthur, King Astrolabe Babies Banks Barrels and Buckets Beekeeping Beggars Bells Beverages Books Bricks and Tiles Bridges Calendar Castles Cathedral Church Cities Climate Clocks Cloth Clothing Clothing Accessories Coal Compass and Navigation Cosmetics Crusades Dance Drama Embroidery Eyeglasses Fairs Fasts Feasts Fish and Fishing Food Forests Funerals Furniture Games Gardens Glass Gold and Silver Guilds Gunpowder Hair Hats Heraldry Holidays Hood, Robin Horses Hospitals Houses Hunting Hygiene Iron Jewelry Jews Kitchen Utensils Knights Latrines and Garbage Lead and Copper Libraries Locks and Keys Machines Magic Maps Medicine Mills Minstrels and Troubadours Monasteries Monsters Music Muslims Numbers Painting Parchment and Paper Pens and Ink Pilgrims Plague Poison Pottery Printing Prisons Records Relics Roads Roland, Song of Saints Salt Schools Sculpture Seals Servants and Slaves Ships and Boats Shoes Sieges Spices and Sugar Stone and Masons Tapestry Taverns and Inns Tools Tournaments Universities Wagons and Carts Water Weapons Weddings Weights and Measures Women Zoos

Publication Links

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Excavating English (Book)

Year of publication: 2013

Publisher: Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop

Genre: language history textbook

Description: Excavating English is a curriculum designed for ages 12 and up. It explores the multicultural roots of the English language from 4000 BC to present day. The text provides over 150 pages of information, trivia, word games, activities and Internet links (including a playlist of supplemental videos). The first chapters give an introduction to linguistics, phonetics and phonology. The text then traces English from the shores of the Black Sea (Proto-Indo-European) through the history of the Germanic peoples, the Danes, the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans, and the great wordsmiths of the Renaissance. The history continues as English crosses the ocean to America, then is influenced by immigrants from all over the world. The text is not only informative, but is lively and interesting, and the activities included after each chapter make the curriculum very interactive.

Publication Links

Buy on Amazon
Buy in digital form at my sister's website
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Speak Like Rain (Book)

Year of publication: 2018

Publisher: Pannebaker Press (self-published)

Genre: poetry textbook

Description: Speak Like Rain defines poetry as "art made with words." This art is made with elements of sound and image, and the text goes through first sound techniques of the English language, then how images are used. It is illustrated throughout with classic poems and some of my poems, when they were appropriate for teaching purposes. (Poems by Bill Salter A79 and Rob Crutchfield A82 are also used as examples.) In the homework, there are some activities and many questions for essay/thought. I include some basic analysis of spoken poetry at the end.

Publication Links

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The Love of God (Poem)

Year of publication: 2018

Publisher: Modern Age

Description:

Publication Links

see poem at Modern Age
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Rain in Season (Book)

Year of publication: 2018

Publisher: Self-published

Genre: poetry collection

Description: My poems to date. Digital only, no cost.

Publication Links

Download from my site
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